Big Mike: A Little Note On A Big Deal?

This long distance romance deal is losing some of its, well, romance. Spending her weeknights holed up in the bedroom of a sublet apartment has begun to turn The Loved One into a irascible thing. She certainly was no Perle Mesta this weekend back home at the Murray Hill Pike ranch and it's hard to blame her. On the other hand, I nominate myself for sainthood for bearing without complaint (oh, alright, I complained a little..., scratch that - a lot) her tight-lipped mien, snippy replies and overall spleen.

So I suppose the prospects of my beatification hinge upon the fact that we didn't actually engage in hand-to-hand combat from Friday evening through late Sunday afternoon, the length of this week's reunion.

Imagine that - St. Big Mike!

We did get some good news Friday when the owners of a terrific country home took us up on our offer to make a contingency offer (is that an offer once removed?) They've found a new place but, like everyone else in the United States, are stuck waiting for someone to take their current home off their hands. It's a nation of time-biders right now. I get the feeling that some family, somewhere - say, Enid, Oklahoma - will get a solid offer on their home Wednesday afternoon, setting in motion the domino fall of several million sales that will cause real estate agents everywhere to swoon in delirium.

Not to mention The Loved One and me. We haven't got a single offer yet, even though our home has been on the market for more than two months and, if I do say so myself, is quite a joint.

That's all for now. Gotta shave (head and face) and dress like an adult. I'm headed up to Bloomington, Indiana later this morning for an afternoon chock-full of interviews with people from a gigantic corporation who seem interested in my services as a copywriter. Hmm.

The last of the great free agents trading in his normal workaday attire (boxer shorts, coffee-stained T-shirt and flip-flops) for a collared shirt and pleated trousers? Can it be? Stay tuned.

Big Mike: Loneliness And Marriage

My visitors of last week - my oldest pal Sophia, her husband Danny, and their two kids, Matty and Arianna - left yesterday afternoon. While they were here, the place was a madhouse. From Sunday to Sunday, only the Louisville Zoo hosted a more cacophonous symphony of barking, roaring, whining, giggling, guffawing, meowing, and flatulence.

The Loved One was only able to take part in the distemper for one full day and parts of two others. As noted here previously, she drives in from Bloomington, Indiana on Friday nights and leaves on Sunday afternoons.

Now I'm alone.

Solitude is more indicative of the writers' lot than all the pens, pencils, word processing programs, or alcohol in the world. Good old Benny Jay has constructed a book-lined garret in his North Side manor. He pounds out his political pieces and books there as well as opuses for this communications colossus. He's tied in to all corners of Chicago, taking calls on separate phones like a bookie with two minutes to go before the starting bell. He's greeted every morning by an avalanche of emails. He's constantly communicating with the outside world. Yet, he's pretty much alone all day long.

Conversely, Milo, Gary's Greatest Writer, does his work in the basement. He's banging on doors constantly (and electronically,) trying to convince business owners that his advertising copy will make them jillionaires. Again, by the end of the day, his throat is sore from all the yakking he's done. And again, he's been all alone.

Me? I pound away at the keyboard in the basement, just like Milo. Except for last week, my Murray Hill Pike ranch house is normally as quiet as a Chrysler showroom. Every couple of hours or so, one cat or the other will steal into the litter box positioned behind my office area. The sudden sound of scratching usually makes whatever hair I have left stand on end.

We've all learned the last few years that one of the most pernicious methods of torture is the imposition of solitude. Enforced, extended loneliness makes human beings crazy. Some of the effects include visual hallucinations, the hearing of voices, self-mutilation, and a grab bag of other psychoses.

Yet guys like Benny Jay, Milo, and I have elected to sequester ourselves all the live long day to gather the pennies that society showers on us literary craftsmen.

Solitude won't make us crazy; we already were crazy.

Big Mike's Marital Bliss Update

Last week, if you recall, I opted for domestic tranquility over the First Amendment. I concluded my Saturday post by writing that the question of whether The Loved One would be compelled to revisit our dispute over my Tuesday post (not linked because it no longer exists) was one of those definitive challenges of marriage. In essence, I was holding my breath as I signed off on Saturday.

You'll all be happy to know (although not in a million years more so than I am) that The Loved One didn't utter a peep about the affair while she was home for the weekend. Whew - I finally get to exhale.

Allow me to crow. I would have had neither the smarts nor the discipline to finesse the situation as I did had it happened even as recently as ten years ago. It's a good bet The Loved One wouldn't either. Sometimes I wonder if marriage isn't an operation best undertaken by those past the age of fifty. And why isn't a written and practical test mandatory before a couple gets a marriage license? We do it before people get drivers licenses. I'm willing to bet that lousy marriages have caused more death and destruction than all the auto accidents since World War II.

Anyway, I feel that The Loved One and I both aced our own test. Congratulations, Kitty - we did it!

Bike Mike: The Post Man Always Thinks Twice

The email came in on Thursday, prefaced by no fewer than six sentences composed entirely of the single word, Please.

It was from The Loved One. To refresh your memory, she's staying in the town of Bloomington Indiana during the workweek while I remain in Louisville trying to sell our home. Ergo, the email.

She'd read my post of Tuesday, March 24, and wasn't happy. Entitled, "A Fallen Idol," it recounted the accidental revelation that I dabble occasionally in a pastime that is common, winked at, relatively harmless, and, by the way, a tad illegal. I say it was accidental because in the course of a conversation, I'd forgotten that my 13-year-old niece Arianna was sitting at the lunch table. Without thinking, I let slip the dabbling in question. Arianna promptly raked me over the coals for engaging in such a pursuit when she's warned ad nauseum not to do so.

It was one of my personal favorite posts for this communications colossus. In it, I grappled with my status as a role model for an impressionable, adoring young girl. I concluded by writing that I have no good answers for any of her pointed questions.

I'm being cagey here because of the email. The Loved One begged me to remove the post. She argued that the mere mention of the pastime could lead to dire consequences. Lose of jobs. Imperiling future employment opportunities. Loss of health care coverage and worse.

My first impulse was to stiffen my spine and refuse to delete it. I girded for the fight. I'd cite the First Amendment. I'd invoke artistic license. I'd pick apart her arguments with the precision of Clarence Darrow or Johnnie Cochran. I'd crush her silly demand as easily as I'd snuff out a cigarette butt with the toe of my shoe.

Luckily for me, I'd been enjoying a beer when the email came in. I planned to get to work immediately on my brilliant rebuttal but first I had to return some of the ingested beer to the water cycle. I stood in the porcelain-tiled room, performing that time-honored post-libation ritual, thinking about how unfair The Loved One was being to this sensitive virtuoso. As the seconds ticked by, I entertained delicious images of The Loved One slinking away in defeat, having been humiliated by my unassailable logic. Consequences, huh? I'd show her the consequences of trying to squelch a literary craftsman!

Would Mark Twain have stood for this? Phillip Roth? For pity's sake, Salman Rushdie went underground for years in defense of his right to publish freely.

Then I zipped up. Suddenly, the thought occurred to me that The Loved One really wasn't trying to smash my windpipe with the heel of her jackboot. Sheesh, she's just a caring, somewhat scared working person trying to keep our family income level north of the poverty line.

Do I really want to crush her? Humiliate her? Would I enjoy watching her slink away in defeat?

Like that, I decided to delete the post.

Deleting a Google Blogger post is awfully easy. Physically, that is. A couple of button clicks and the post disappears as if it had never existed. Still, there was a pugnacious, righteous part of me that resisted fiercely.

I told myself a couple of things. One, the post wasn't Twain's "Letters From The Earth." It wasn't "Portnoy's Complaint" or "The Satanic Verses." It was a simple rumination about an everyday moral dilemma.

The second - and more important - consideration was the fact that, golly gee, I really do love The Loved One! Even if I disagree with her reasoning (and believe me, I don't buy a word of it,) this means a hell of a lot to her.

Is my pompous dedication to some ideal of literary purity worth more than her sense of well-being? The answer, I reminded myself and my recalcitrant button-clicking finger, was no. I clacked the delete button and the post was no more.

I dashed off a response to The Loved One's email. I did it, it read. I want to keep peace in the family. Now, I never want to hear another word about it again. Ever. Please.

I feared rehashing the argument might stir up my blood.

My old pal Danny, whose family is visiting me this week, laughingly reminded me that many wives just might find the urge to revisit the contretemps irresistible. Hmm. The Loved One, I suspected, might indeed wish to explain herself in greater detail after returning home on Friday night. I told Danny I hoped she wouldn't. All I need to know is that removing the post means a lot to her.

It's Saturday morning now. She hasn't mentioned it yet. The hammer may fall soon. Then again, maybe it won't. So goes the challenge of marriage.

Big Mike: A Guide For The Married Man

With The Loved One spending her weekdays in Bloomington, Indiana now, leaving me and the cats, Boutros and Terra, to our own devices, I've been thinking about the nature of marriage, love, relationships, and other forms of comedy.

TLO seems to be suffering more than we are. After all, she's sleeping in a sublet room, sharing an apartment with a cerebrum-on-legs grad student, while the cats and I have the run of the Louisville manor. We phone numerous times a day just to hear each others' voices. The conversations regularly seem to end up with one or both of us dewy-eyed.

I might think that would be the tale any married couple would tell in a similar situation but, of course, that isn't true at all. Take a couple of examples. My neighbor, Captain Billy, grants me the benefits of his wisdom as often as he can - that is, whenever her sees me before I can see him. The Captain has many fascinating ideas about husbandly duties and wifely obeisance.

He had much to say to me when he learned that I would drive TLO to work downtown every day before she jumped for saner pastures. We're a one-car family and I didn't want to be stuck without one. The Captain told me there was a perfectly good bus stop about a mile away and that my wife should have the decency to take that bus, thereby not putting me out and, besides, gas cost nearly four dollars a gallon at the time. "What the hell's wrong with her?" he demanded.

The Captain's family, being a normal Kentucky brood, has enough vehicles to open a used car lot. Everone in the family has a set of wheels. Hell, if Boutros and Terra lived with them, they'd have cars too. Normally, the Captain's wife drives her own car to work but at the time her car, a massive heap with a robust engine that serves as my alarm clock every morning, was on the fritz. Since the car has been in use since the Taft administration, it took weeks to find parts for it. Through those weeks, the Captain deigned only to drop his bride off at the bus stop, rather than haul her all the way to work (or, god forbid, let her use his car.)

For kicks, I decided to check the bus schedule to see how long her trip might be. It turned out she had to ride and hour and fifteen minutes each way. That bus, by the way, comes by every hour so woe unto her should she miss it.

I told the Captain that TLO might not reward me with a hug and a kiss if I suggested such a scheme to her. The Captain recoiled as if I'd taken a swing at him. "You tell her to take the bus," he advised. "You don't ask her."

Naturally, if I'd ever approach the delicate flower in that manner, I'd be the one recoiling from a flurry of swings.

I merely laughed off the Captain's advice and he walked away probably convinced my testicles are the size of protons.

Now, example number two. Skip the Trombonist's wife slipped while walking down the stairs late last fall and broke her ankle so badly she had to have metal bolts surgically inserted. Since she'd be confined to a wheelchair for a couple of months, she decided to stay in Harrodsburg in her sister's one-story home.

One Tuesday, during our Trivia game (Skip and I are part of Team Gorlock) I asked him if he missed the love of his life. "Damned right I do," he replied. "The dishwasher's full, the litter box is overflowing, there's nothing in the refrigerator. Shit, the place is a mess."

"Have you cooed these words into her ear yet, you old Romeo?" I asked.

"Nah. Why should I? Nothin' she can do about it now," he said.

After growing up in a family and neighborhood where husbands and wives regarded each other as if they were operating under United Nations-imposed cease-fires, I can be forgiven for thinking The Loved One and I have a rather unique relationship. Then again, I think of friends like Danny and Sophia, Ben and Pam, Milo and Sharon, all of whom have been hitched for more than 20 years. And if their words are to be believed, none has ever even entertained the notion of having an innocent fling. They all seem to cherish and care for their cellmates.

Who are the oddballs? We who sorta like our cellmates or Captain Billy, Skip, and their respective helpmeets?

Note from Big Mike: Celebrate today! It's the 200th birthday of both Abie Baby Lincoln (the original cast recording of "Hair" was the first album I ever owned - if you get the reference, you are awfully cool) and Charles Darwin. Both gents believed in god, pretty much the only thing I can take issue with either of them.